Guide, 5 min read
What does an EV charger installation cost?
Two costs: the unit, and the work. The unit is a published price. The work depends almost entirely on how far the cable travels and what your consumer unit looks like.
Get a price
Where does it need to go? Two taps and a postcode gets you a price.
Why nobody can quote you a figure from an advert
The headline prices you see assume a best case: consumer unit with a spare way, correct earthing, and the charger going on a wall within a few metres of the board. Plenty of houses are that best case. Plenty are not.
A quote given without seeing your board and your cable route is a guess, and the guess gets corrected on the invoice. That is the single most common complaint in this trade.
What moves the price, in order
- Cable run length, and whether it is clipped, trunked or buried
- Whether the consumer unit has a spare way with the right protection
- The earthing arrangement, and whether additional protection is needed
- Whether the main fuse has headroom, or load curtailment is needed
- Groundworks: trenching, ducting and reinstatement across a drive
- The unit itself, which is the part you can shop around for
Supplying your own unit
You can buy the charger yourself and pay for installation only. Plenty of people do, particularly when they have found a deal on a specific model.
Two things to know. The installer will not warrant hardware they did not supply, and if the unit turns out to be wrong for your supply you own that decision. Say at enquiry stage which way you want to go, because it changes what gets quoted.
Where the real saving is
Not in the installation. It is in the tariff. Charging on a time-of-use EV tariff overnight costs a fraction of the day rate, and a fraction again of public rapid charging.
That saving repeats every week for as long as you own the car, which is why the unit that schedules charging properly for your tariff matters more than a small difference in the installation quote.
Grants
If you rent, own a flat, are a landlord, run a business, or have no off-street parking, there is a government grant of up to £500 per socket. If you own a house with a driveway, there is not.
The grants page sets out all five schemes and what each requires.
Next step
Send us the postcode and we will tell you what your property needs.
Send the postcode and what the property is, and we will come back with the quote or the one question still outstanding.
Questions
EV charging questions on this
How much does it cost to install an EV charger at home?
It depends on the unit you choose, the distance from your consumer unit to the parking, and whether the board and earthing need any work. Those three answer most of it, and all three are settled at survey before you commit to anything.
Is it cheaper to buy the charger myself?
Sometimes, though not always once you account for warranty handling. What it definitely does is separate the two decisions, so you can compare installation quotes on a like-for-like basis.
Are there hidden costs?
There should not be. Everything that might be needed is visible at survey: the board, the earthing, the run and the main fuse. If a quote arrives without those being looked at, that is where surprises come from.
Get a quote
Get an EV charger quote for your property
Five fields. We reply with either a fixed price or the one thing we still need to know.
- No cost, and no obligation to book anything
- Your details are never sold on or passed around
- A fixed price for the work described, in writing
Would rather talk it through? Call 07487 696567.
